Sonia and Khim prepare for a kiss. David Steinberg spent years photographing the women of Divas. Photo: David Steinberg

It takes five minutes to walk from the home of David Steinberg to the place that used to be Divas — the place that was, up until April, a three-decade-old, three-floor club for transgender women and the men who wanted to know them. The walk covers a little more than two blocks.

Steinberg moved to his home 13 years ago. In part, he says, “to be close to Divas.” He spent many evenings at Divas, three or four a week.

He did this, he says, “for a million reasons.”

One of them: To take photographs of the women who found their own home at this bar. He took their pictures with a Nikon N80, a bricky camera, one that uses 35mm film.

Steinberg took 30,000 photos of women in Divas, including this portrait of Avaria. Photo: David Steinberg

The first portrait Steinberg took was of a woman named Stephanie, back in 1997, despite a “No Photographs” policy at Divas. But he started his project in earnest in 2003; the bar manager gave him permission. The only rule was that he ask the women first. Some were hesitant, but Steinberg got to know them, and pretty soon, “Everybody wanted me to take their pictures.”

On the evening of March 30 — the night that something like 1,000 people came to Divas to say a final goodbye and drink a little too much — Steinberg was there, giving away the books. “It was like this big reunion,” Steinberg says. “If Divas hadn’t been closing, it would have been a celebration. It would have been wonderful.”

David Steinberg spent years photographing the women of Divas, like Melonie. Photo: David Steinberg

Now Divas, San Francisco’s only bar for trans women, is gone, another lost piece of a weird and wild city that no longer exists. But that doesn’t mean it has to be forgotten. “Suddenly now I have an historical archive,” Steinberg says. “Thirty thousand pictures, maybe 15,000 halfway decent pictures. … A lot of individuals just hanging out around the club.”

Twenty of them are on display at Emperor Norton’s BoozeLand, a bar that is roughly five blocks away from where Divas used to be, where Steinberg spent so many hours, camera in hand. “My ‘Cheers’ bar,” he says. “I walked in the door and they’d know who I was.”

All of the photographs — those in the book, and those in the show — were shot between 2003 and 2008. The photos are a little grainy, full of the intention that comes with shooting analog, knowing that the roll of film is finite, that you have to make every image count.

David Steinberg spent years photographing the women of Divas, San Francisco’s only bar for transgender women. In 2008, he published a book of the images. The bar closed in April and Steinberg now has a show featuring his images. Photo: David Steinberg

But, Steinberg says, maybe the photo show will help. Maybe Boozeland, not all that far away, recognizing this history, will be a “way of welcoming women from Divas, letting them know that they can come to Boozeland and not be worried about being hassled or being disrespected.”

Maybe, this archive, will show people that Divas wasn’t strictly — or even mostly — a place, but rather the community that filled it. A community that gave a building life.

“Divas of San Francisco”: Through at least the end of May. Free. Emperor Norton’s BoozeLand, 510 Larkin St., S.F. Books available for $20 at the bar and online for $40.

Steinberg took this photo of Veronica and her money at Divas. Photo: David Steinberg